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Bruges, Leiden
and Dijon
We have our favorites, of course, who doesn’t? In Bruges. The two words go together. The movie made a huge impact in Belgium and as we sit in the office of Bruges Tourism we are surrounded by posters advertising the 2008 film. The movie has brought more tourists to the city as did Midnight in the Garden of Evil to Savannah, Georgia and Under the Tuscan Sun to Tuscany. Bruges, well known to Europeans, hardly needs more tourists. It’s on the radar of sophisticated Americans for Places To Visit despite the fact that some insiders are more enamored by other Belgian towns of the Middle Ages like Namur and Liège. Namur, for example, a college town and “romantic city “ on the river Meuse, has its Citadel, its Arsenal and its circular tower, the Belfry. Liège has the detailed history of the city in the Treasure House of Liège Cathedral and about two dozen museums to keep you busy for several days.
Bruges, with its population of 120,000 people, is better known but it’s expensive and so successful a tourist destination it doesn’t need to bend backwards to help visitors much. Nevertheless, it’s a delightful walk. In 2002 the Bruges Tourist Office published a very helpful series of four brochures, Europe in Bruges. They offer self-guided strolls through different parts of the city whether you’re heading for the main Markt to enjoy the bustle of the medieval city’s center or to take pleasure in the more serene Church of our Lady that has a surprise: Michelangelo’s sculpture of his Madonna and Child, his only sculpture to leave Italy while he was alive. It has however been stolen twice by armies, the French in 1794 and the German in 1944. Each time it has found its way back to this ancient city to add to the mystique of this great artist.
If your time is limited and you can’t fit in visits to the Salvador Dali exhibits in the belfry of Bruges, or to the Diamond, Chocolate or French Fry (Friet) Museums or even the famous De Halve Maan family brewery, check out the yellow City Tour bus service. It offers 50 minute tours that offer a fairly busy overview of the city (€12) unfortunately without on-off privileges. In Leiden. The Benelux Countries are so easy to visit by Rail Europe pass. And inexpensive because Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg are regarded by the rail system as one nation so a three-country pass will get you into France at no extra cost (and Germany too). Bruges was about an hour from Brussels and Leiden about the same from Amsterdam. Leiden has always captivated us because, though it’s small town of just 120,000 population, it’s the home of the famous Boerhaave Museum. Leiden was the center of the medical world in the early 17th Century although it had been established by William of Orange in 1575. The city had valiantly resisted a Spanish army siege the year before and Prince William, who later became King William III of England, wanted to reward it by offering the inhabitants a choice between a remission of taxes for ten years or the establishment of a university. You have to admire the Dutch; they chose a university. Ultimately there came to this medical school one Hermann Boerhaave who has been called the “greatest clinical teacher of the 18th Century and one of the greatest of all time.” The Boerhaave National Museum of the History of Science and Medicine in Leiden is named after him.
One of the most exciting exhibits in the museum is a collection of several of the microscopes designed by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1685-1725), a wealthy merchant from Delft. He wasn’t a doctor but his fascination with the little creatures he saw through his simple double-lenses enabled medical scientists to expand their work. Devoted to creating microscopes better made than any others, and dedicated to microscopy for most of his 90 years, he developed the work of an earlier Italian anatomist, Marcello Malpighi. Leeuwenhoek, a non-physician was made a Fellow of the prestigious Royal Society in London, a rare honor.
Says Bart Grob, the young curator of
the museum, “No one really knows how he produced those small
lenses but they gave 150 to 200 times magnification. We believe he
probably
melted glass and allowed liquid
droplets to fall into cold water to become ‘glass marbles.’”
A painting of Leeuwenhoek hangs alongside some of his microscopes.
There are, however, so many rooms to explore in this museum. Another
display is the original first pendulum clock ever designed. It was
created by Christiaan Huygens in 1656, just one of those famous Dutch
aristocrats in the 17th century when the Netherlands (by virtue of
its great trading fleets) was the wealthiest country in the known
world.
Leiden today seems to suffer from an inadequate tourist infrastructure despite the fact that the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions is one of the best tourist offices in the world. The Leiden tourist guide available at the railway station tourist office, for example, has only two pages in English out of 65! In Dijon Dijon, in France’s Burgundy, on the other hand has a superb tourist service for visitors including the hard to find Owl’s Trail booklet. It used to be free from the tourist office but now costs €2.50, still a bargain. Dijon’s claim (it no longer can call its mustard Dijon mustard as the company sold its name to an out of France company) is “20 centuries of history in 240 acres.” That suggest you can see a lot in a brief walk and that is one of the charms of this 1,700 years-old city. It was a Roman fortress initially as so many European Middle Ages towns were. More recent records go back to 1015 although after a fire in 1137 the city had to be rebuilt. Some of the homes go back to the 12th through the 15th century. More recent construction dates to 1788. Dijon is also a convenient center for those who want to explore the wine country of Burgundy. With the Owl’s Trail in hand, an adventure to see this 150,000 populated marvelous city is quite simple. The trail starts at the Tourists Information Center on Place Darcy and leads you past 22 places of significance in Dijon’s history. The walk brings you to the 11th Century Benedectine abbey and the twin-towered St Benigne with its wooden artifacts going back to the time of Jesus. Some of those wooden objects were discovered in a bog which had helped to preserve them.
A few minutes walk along the Owl’s Trail brings you to the 13th Century Gothic Notre Dame Cathedral. Rows of fearsome gargoyles hang over the street on the west side between the two galleries, some connected to rain runoff pipes. The peasants were, of course, told if they sinned they would be soaked from above by the gargoyles spitting on them. The owl is the symbol of the city and a duplicate of the ancient owl carved on the north wall (the original was destroyed by vandals in 2001) is polished by the hands of those who touch it for the legendary luck that supposedly brings. |
he history of Europe is the story of war, unrelenting soul-destroying
conflict. The Thirty Years’ War, the Eighty Years’ War,
the Hundred Years’ War as if the sky’s the limit. Yet it
did one thing: it so impoverished some medieval cities their inhabitants
couldn’t afford to rebuild. To our advantage today. These towns
have endured and have endeared themselves to our hearts. They fascinate
visitors across Europe and every country seems to have them. In Scotland
it’s the Fife town of Culross; in England, York; in Romania,
Sighisoara; in Russia, Goritzy on the Volga, and in Germany, Rothenburg
ob der Tauber -- indeed almost any German town along the Rhine. 
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